Asia’s Most Popular Google Searches

‘Gangnam Style’ was a top search term in Asia — but not in all countries.

What were Asia’s most popular Google searches for 2012? Data released by the search-engine giant on Thursday revealed a few terms you’d expect – and also turned up a few surprises.

Gangnam, the upscale Seoul district, was virtually unheard of outside Korea before Psy’s “Gangnam Style” song and music video went viral. Now Psy is a household name, and his horsey dance as widespread as the “Macarena” was in 1994.

Not everyone in Asia cared, however. K-pop-savvy Japan didn’t respond to the hype, while India was more interested in Bollywood and its stars. “Gangnam Style,” meanwhile, was the most-watched music video in Taiwan, but people there searched for it on YouTube instead of Google.

Not all of Asia took an interest in international sports, either. The Olympics were big in China, Japan and South Korea, but they didn’t turn up in searches from India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia or Taiwan – all areas with low medal counts this year. Think Euro 2012 was a big deal? Nowhere but Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore agreed with you.

Psy wasn’t the only pop-culture phenomenon to dominate Google searches. Former Knicks player Jeremy Lin was a favorite across Asia, particularly in Singapore and Greater China. Whitney Houston, who died in February, was also what Google called a “universal search term,” while TV singing contest “The Voice” was searched for in countries including Vietnam, Australia and China (Indonesia, for its part, preferred “Indonesian Idol”).

As for the U.S. election? Singapore was the only place where people searched for it in large numbers.

Comments (5 of 5)

Why this website doesn't check with Baidu or Yahoo? Yahoo is 10x more influential in the the whole Asia region.

2:01 am December 14, 2012

MorningMist wrote:

"As for the U.S. election? Singapore was the only place where people searched for it in large numbers."

The only reason no one in India searched for it was because it was all over the local and cable news. It was the only thing showing on the news that never concerned the local citizens. When you can get the news 24x7 over something that you have absolutely no control on the outcome, you will not be "googling" about it further.

9:00 pm December 13, 2012

JPMinNC wrote:

The links to the slideshow claim "See a slideshow of Google’s top five search terms by region." Please add some information to the photos. What were the regions? What were the top five for each region?